


(Your Love) Thawed Out

by calico_fiction



Series: make me bold [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Compulsory Heterosexuality, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Major Character Injury, Miscommunication, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Porn with Feelings, Temporary Amnesia, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:21:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29694966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calico_fiction/pseuds/calico_fiction
Summary: They're probably going to get murdered by a fucking clown demon tomorrow, so Richie and Eddie celebrate their last few hours on earth by having the best sex of Richie's life. It doesn't seem to matter very much to Richie's mind, body, or soul that he's supposed to be straight.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: make me bold [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204370
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trendsand_makebelieve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trendsand_makebelieve/gifts).



> movie continuity!!
> 
> title from Like A Virgin by Madonna ;)

Richie keeps drinking. It's a fucking bomb that Bev just dropped, and now Mike and Bill are talking about some kind of hoodoo or some shit, so Richie keeps fucking drinking. He takes a shot, and then another one. Across the room, Eddie is fucking shaking like a nervous lap dog. Mike's virus talk obviously got him bad.

"It's better if I show you," Mike says. "We don't have a lot of time." And Richie gets that. He really does. He can hear that fucking clock ticking like it's in the room with them, and something in the back of his mind, deep in his gut, is giving him the sneaking suspicion that he's next. Bev was vague about it, all that 'the place Stanley went' bullshit, but everyone knows what she means, and Richie- Well he's never talked about it before, never admitted it out loud, but as far as denial goes he's not so great at it. He's been suicidal before, it's a fact. He's thought about it, felt the fucking urge, hunting him for weeks at a time. A monster under his bed- or, more accurately it seems, slithering around in his pipes. At the same time, though, he's not- Richie knows they have to do this, but he's just not ready.

"Okay, I get that, I do," he says, and stands up from where he's been leaning on the bar more for emotional support than physical. "But fucking- look at us right now, man. I'm drunk. Eds over there looks like he's second away from swooning like a Victorian maiden-"

 _"Fuck_ you!" Eddie snaps, shooting Richie full of satisfaction like electricity. He doesn't grin because that's literally his job, but he's closer to breaking than he can remember ever being. At least, that he can remember _yet_.

"-and don't think nobody noticed that Bill needs to eat an orange or some shit," Richie finishes, gesturing to Bill's pale face, the sweat marks on his shirt. "We need to take a fucking time out, dude." Mike opens his mouth to argue, and Bill is already trying to get out something that starts with the letter B. Before they can make their disagreement known, though, Eddie jumps in on Richie's side (he's always on Richie's side, Richie remembers suddenly; _always,_ even when he'd wanted to wring Richie's neck a word before).

"That's true," he says. His voice is so much deeper than Richie expects it to be even after a whole night hearing it, but it still gets reedier when he's worked up. "We can't do fucking magic or whatever- _if_ we decide we're gonna do it, which we _haven't_ by the way- We can't do it if we make ourselves sick." Richie instantly thinks of several tailor-made for Eddie counters to that, but since Eddie is supporting his idea he keeps them to himself. He wouldn't have as a kid, he knows, and that's not something he had to remember. It took him a long time to grow out of it, and even now that maturity is purely selective.

"Dawn," Ben suggests quickly, and now Richie is also struck with the recollection that that's always been Ben's role in the group too. He was the very embodiment of mediation - except of course when he was introducing them to some new shit they weren't supposed to be getting into. "Just a few hours for everyone to recharge, and then we'll get started." Mike and Bill grumble and shuffle around about it, Bev still quiet and shaken (and isn't that fucking jarring) between them, but they don't put forth any more actual fight. Eddie's shoulders drop a fraction, and he breathes up at the ceiling.

"Great," Richie says. "Glad we all agree." And he makes a point of pouring himself another shot, just to needle at Mike and Bill. It works, obviously, and they shout him toward the stairs and up to his room before he can even pretend to drink it. Eddie follows him, and Richie only thinks to take note of that when they reach the landing together. He glances over his shoulder at Eddie, and Eddie grimaces like he just noticed too. Richie snorts, calculated laughter to release them both from the tension of cognitive dissonance or whatever. Again, that's his job.

"This shit is so weird," he says, and Eddie's face smoothes out as he chuckles and nods. Mission accomplished, and that's why Richie makes the big bucks, and yadda ya. His mouth ruins it in the next second, like it usually does when he's not running it on stage, and with just as much thoughtless instinct as Eddie followed him Richie adds, "You wanna come in?"

Eddie doesn't fall back into a rote response again, though. Richie can see it on his face (grown up but still so much the same) as he uses his Big Boy brain to make a real decision. Finally he shrugs with a blustery, dramatic sigh.

"Yeah, whatever," he grumbles, genuinely cranky about it where most people would be playing it up. It's endearing for some reason, and Richie smiles at it. "I don't think I'm actually going to sleep either way." As soon as Eddie says so, Richie realizes he had already figured as much. With a little effort, and a lot of haziness, he manages to remember more than a few nights that Eddie had snuck onto the phone to call Richie late at night and tell him to come over in secret just to be there while Eddie spent the hours 'til morning pinballing from wall to wall.

The inside of Richie's room is dim compared to the brightly lit hallway, only the small lamp on the writing desk switched on, and Richie leaves it that way. He prefers for his surroundings to be kind of low-input when he's been imbibing anything, which was a bummer at the beginning of his career when he was expected to schmooze at parties and in clubs. Now he's ancient where the L.A. scene is concerned, so he can choose to be boring or eccentric as the mood strikes him. He kicks his shoes off and lets them land wherever, smirking at Eddie's disapproving _tsk._ Eddie keeps his on, but Richie knows that has nothing to do with his willingness to be here. If he didn't want to be hanging out with Richie right now, he'd be making sure everyone and their third cousin twice removed knew about it.

"How the fuck are we supposed to rest," Eddie starts complaining the second the door closes behind him. Seems he learned some small degree of restraint too, and uses it just as sparingly. Richie lets the bitchy tone wash over him like some kind of comfort, and plops himself down on the foot of the bed with a bounce. "We're going to go hunt a fucking clown demon in-" He shoots his arm out sharply to ruck up his sleeve and checks his watch, the wide band dark around his wrist. "-fucking four hours? Four hours!"

"I mean, technically," Richie says, just to be pedantic because he knows it'll get Eddie off track. "'Dawn' is not an exact time, so-"

"Shut the fuck up, Rich," Eddie interrupts, but the roll of his eyes is fond.

"Wish I'd brought some fuckin' weed," Richie laments, the closest he'll get to admitting to Eddie that he feels the same way. He'll sober up, and he might unwind a little, but there's no way he's going to be able to fully relax nevermind actually sleep. Eddie snorts again, rolls his eyes again. Richie knows he won't get tired of it.

"Why am I not surprised toking is your vice," Eddie says with a shake of his head.

"Vices kill, Eddie Spaghetti!" Richie declares, putting on an old-timey officious sort of voice to do it. Eddie's quickly stifled laugh is as thrilling as that first step on stage always is every time. "I merely take a medicinal supplement for my nerves!" A comfortable silence passes between them, the two of them smiling at each other long after the moment of Richie's joke has faded away. Eventually though, Eddie has wound up tight again and starts pacing in front of Richie.

"I wish you'd brought weed too," he admits. "A bowl does sound nice right about now." He runs a hand through his hair. He messes it up and a strand falls down over his forehead, breaking free of whatever product or heat treatment he'd inflicted on it this morning and starting to curl into its natural waviness. He didn't used to straighten it, but it had only gotten curlier as he got older. By the time they were juniors it drove him crazy. Richie had always thought it suited him though.

"Hm," Richie hums, forcibly dragging his eyes and his thoughts away from Eddie's hair. Kind of a weird thing to be preoccupied with, but Richie's a weird guy and he's learned that questioning himself only sends him around in circles that eventually lead pretty steeply downward. "Wouldn't have expected you to go in for the recreational stuff." Eddie shrugs, nods.

"I had a roommate in college who grew his own, so I could see where it came from and what went in," he explains, and it's Richie's turn to nod. That was lucky for Eddie, he thinks, and he's glad for it even as there's a pang in his chest that he wasn't there for it. He can't imagine what Eddie would be like high and he wants to know. He wants to know everything about Eddie, everything he missed and everything he just hasn't remembered yet. The impatience is so sharp it's almost painful.

"But I could've gotten mine anywhere," Richie points out. It's half just to keep the conversation moving and not get caught up on what could have been, and half out of actually wanting to know if Eddie would really take drugs from him. Eddie pauses in his tracks, blinking into the empty air in front of him.

"Oh yeah," he realizes quietly. "I guess I-" He cuts himself off with a furtive glance out of the corner of his eye, and then starts up his pacing again without finishing. Richie knows the sentence would have been 'I trust you' but he doesn't insist on hearing it. They're men now and they can't say that to each other anymore, if they ever could. Doesn't mean he can't know it's true, can't let it make him happy, if only on the inside. Another short silence passes, Richie rolling his neck and shoulders with a few snaps, crackles, and pops as Eddie gradually picks up speed.

Finally Eddie breaks open. He throws up his arms and curses, "Fuck, I just have too much-"

"-too much energy," Richie jinxes him. "Yeah. I remember." Eddie glares at Richie for the pseudo-interruption, and there's just something about the wet-cat expression on Eddie's face that makes Richie feel weightless and warm from head to toe. He can't say for certain now of course, but if he had been asked yesterday if he'd ever been to Cloud Nine before the answer would have been a sure no.

"Not enough endorphins," Eddie grumbles. It's still weird for his voice to be like that, when Richie is expecting him to whine instead. Some strange feeling he can't recognize lurches in Richie's guts at the timbre of it, not unpleasant exactly but insistent. He ignores it and reaches for a joke instead.

"Jumping jacks?" he says with a knowing grin, because Eddie - at least the Eddie that Richie (kind of) knows - is absolutely not going to work out just for the endorphins no matter how badly he wants 'em. Richie laughs out loud, easier and more genuine than a lot of his recent laughs have been, at the snotty look Eddie shoots him for daring to suggest such a thing.

Eddie keeps pacing around Richie's room, his path an L shape along the foot and side of the bed. He's still short, but his legs are long anyway, lean underneath his dark jeans. They look expensive. Looking at them, Richie is struck with the urge to feel them. They're probably soft. Eddie had a thing about rough fabrics and tags and shit back in the day, so. Yeah. His jeans have got to be expensive and soft. His underwear too probably; maybe it's modal. He folds and unfolds his arms across his chest as he paces, pulling his jacket tight across his shoulders and then releasing it, and repeat. His shoulders are the same as his legs: small but shaped well, broad as compared to his own waist even though he'd just look skinny if he was measured in terms of Richie's body. The rest of him must be the same, Richie imagines. His belly firm but not cut, his chest flat, his hands small and thin but not delicate. He used to keep his nails cut short religiously so that he couldn't get much dirt underneath them. Maybe now he gets manicures, spends his hour long lunch in a salon getting his fingers rubbed down and his palms massaged. Richie likes the thought, a lot for some reason, so he keeps thinking it. He checks out of the here and now, knowing that even though he's the one who invited Eddie in he's not expected to keep him occupied. Eddie is just here to be where Richie is.

 _You could jerk off,_ Richie's brain points out a few moments into his daydreaming about two sets of hands pampering each other where one set is Eddie's. _For endorphins._ It's unclear whether 'you' is himself or Eddie. Either way, once Richie comes to the idea it's difficult to push it away. It only repeats itself over and over, as if he might not have heard it inside his own head. _You could jerk off. You could jerk off. Hey, idiot, you could jerk off._

"You could jerk off," Richie blurts out loud. His voice has the same inflection it always does, which is a relief, because it doesn't sound like he blurted it, despite that he very much did. He was thinking it, and couldn't stop thinking it, and now he's said it out loud. Richie made a point, very early in life, to just not be embarrassed, and it managed to stick with him even if he couldn't remember making it. So he doesn't blush - and if Eddie asks, the heat gathering in Richie's cheeks is just the booze he's already sobering up from. But Eddie doesn't ask, he just rolls his eyes.

"Ugh," he groans in distaste, and doesn't elaborate. Richie decides he should take a ten second break from speaking. (Ten seconds is all he can manage being quiet consciously, he's tested it. It's a gift. Shit, he'd said that to Stan once. Six seconds left... Five...) Eddie frees Richie from his countdown by throwing himself down on the bed next to Richie on his back, bouncing them both briefly. He lets out another big gusty sigh for the dramatics of it, making Richie laugh. It's a boyish giggle that comes out of him, unfamiliar until it's finished, and then painfully nostalgic. He hasn't laughed like that since the last time he saw Eddie. Maybe it was the lack of Eddie that took it away or maybe it was just age and the heavier humors of adult life and Richie's childhood self still lives here in Derry fucking Maine. There's no way to know, so Richie just falls onto his back next to Eddie and accepts the gift. His knee bumps up against Eddie's where both of them have their legs hanging over the edge of the bed. Richie's feet touch the floor; Eddie's dangle. Richie stretches and tucks his arms underneath his head.

"You stink," Eddie mutters, almost certainly more out of habit than truth. Richie's a sweaty guy, generally, but he knows that his deodorant and cologne are nice together and long lasting. Late afternoon Richie feels sloppy but girls are into him, and gays too (a higher compliment in Richie's humble opinion. Just because... Well, the prissy stereotype has to come from somewhere, right? So they must be hard to please. Right?). Maybe witching hour Richie is a little more stale but he bets if he smells like anything he smells like the whiskey he was shooting downstairs, woodsy-sweet with the underlying tang of alcohol. He wouldn't be mad at it, if he was in Eddie's position. He considers sticking his fingers in his own armpit and then trying to get them up Eddie's nose, but he decides against it out of nothing more than laziness. Eddie squirms around to get his toes on the ground so that he can start bouncing one leg up and down. He's always been totally incapable of sitting still. It drove his mother and all their teachers nuts. Even in his sleep, Eddie tossed and turned and kicked Richie under the covers. Jesus, they were fucking close if they were still sleeping in the same bed into their teens.

Richie gets nervous all of the sudden, for no discernable reason, just a tiny pinprick of unease on the back of his neck, in the tips of his fingers. He tugs a hand out from under his head (too quickly, he gets a crick in his shoulder) and slams it down reflexively on the thigh of Eddie's bouncing leg. Eddie goes statue still immediately, his muscle taut beneath Richie's hand. His jeans are soft. ( _His underwear too,_ Richie's brain reminds him. It _has_ to be modal.) There's a pause where some kind of tension builds between them, pulling the atmosphere in the room just as taut as Eddie's leg, and then Eddie breaks it like glass. He jackknifes up into sitting, into looming over Richie, bucking Richie's hand off of him like he's a bull and he just saw red. Richie holds up his hands to show he won't put them on Eddie without permission again, but the look on Eddie's face is- intense, but not angry. Richie can't even begin to read it, but he can tell at least that it doesn't mean trouble - or at least, not trouble for Richie. Eddie plants his palm to the side of Richie's head and leans in closer, still looking, unblinking, his eyes gone dark. Richie's unaccountably nervous again, but even still - the closer Eddie gets the less Richie wants to tell him to back off.

 _Kiss me,_ Richie thinks first, and then _Is he going to-?_ He's not fucking Yoda so that's- can't be right, but then Eddie does kiss him and nothing else seems worth Richie's attention anymore. Eddie's mouth is soft and warm, his lips smooth and un-chapped. He kisses Richie chastely at first, before tilting his head just enough to slide their mouths together along their seams, wet. When Eddie slips Richie a little tongue he tastes sweet and minty; he brushed his teeth after dinner. Of course he did. He pulls away but hovers close, so close that Richie almost has to cross his eyes to keep looking up at him. Their noses brush against each other with every breath, and every breath comes a little faster than the last. Richie's whole mouth is tingling, buzzing. He licks his lips, drags his tongue along his teeth, completely helpless not to.

"Okay?" Eddie asks.

The correct answer is no, obviously. Richie's not gay, and he doesn't think Eddie is either. He's _married._ But Richie wants to say yes. Restraint he may have learned, but self-denial? No fucking way. Plus, they might fucking die tomorrow so what the fuck, right?

"Yeah," he croaks, his throat somehow dry even though his mouth is flush. "Yes, okay." He nods too, and cups the back of Eddie's neck to tug him back in. He _needs_ Eddie to understand. He needs Eddie to kiss him again.

And Eddie does, he does kiss Richie again, but he does Richie one better than that. He goes down onto his elbows over Richie, lowers his body half on top of Richie's. His firm belly and flat chest, just like Richie imagined them, press warm and heavy against Richie's wider and softer terrain through their shirts. One of Eddie's legs is between Richie's, one of Richie's between Ed's. And Eddie kisses Richie's fucking lights out. He slides his tongue in and out of Richie's mouth with the rhythm of a slow fuck, sucks at and scrapes his teeth on Richie's tenderized lips. He doesn't let up until Richie is hard against his thigh, and then he tears himself away so that he can watch Richie's face when he rolls his hips.

Pleasure sizzles through Richie as if it was a flame-hot poker and Richie was a tub of spreadable butter. Richie hears himself moan from deep inside himself where he's hyper-focused on that heat. He spreads out under Eddie, melted.

Eddie rolls again, a low purr of satisfaction rumbling into Richie's ear. Eddie's breath and his voice send powerful waves of want through Richie. Richie wouldn't claim that he's never had good sex because that's just sad, but it has never been like this before. When he'd necked like this with a girlfriend or - more often - a hookup, of course it was leagues up from, like, his own hand or whatever. She'd touch him and her hands would feel nice, and she'd kiss him and her mouth would feel nice, and he'd fuck her and her cunt would feel nice. But _this-_

"Holy shit, Rich," Eddie hisses into the damp skin of Richie's neck, and at the pinch of his teeth Richie's head tosses to the side to give him more room of its own accord. "You're so fucking responsive, that's so hot."

"Oh, thanks," Richie gasps. A fucking stupid thing to say, but ask Richie if he gives a shit. He doesn't. He doesn't care about anything right now, because _this_ feels like Eddie is setting him on fire. He struggles to get Eddie's jacket off without dislodging him, and fails. Eddie sits up, kneeling in between Richie's legs which- _hot,_ fuck, Richie feels so hot- Eddie gives Richie a smug, lopsided grin that creases his cheek as he slides the jacket off of his shoulders and down his arms smoothly. As the red fabric passes it accentuates every curve of Eddie's arms; shoulders, biceps, forearms, and then one at a time his wrists. Richie's eyes follow that path unwaveringly, and he realizes between one breath and the next that he has never wanted to see someone shirtless so badly in his life.

"Off," he snarls, his voice coming out of him like it's a separate animal. "Get it- Get this the fuck _off."_ He sits up and tugs at Eddie's shirt rabidly. He wants- He wants to fucking rip it off with his _teeth-_ Eddie laughs as Richie yanks him around by the shirt trying to get it off of him. The struggle and the static release more of his hair from its straightness, strands falling into his face alluringly. Richie wants desperately to see it messed up entirely.

"Okay there, it's off, you freak, now let me see," Eddie grouses as his shirt falls from Richie's hands, instantly forgotten. He's pretending at the ire this time, easy to tell by the smile splitting his face. It's his turn then to tangle Richie up in his clothing, pulling both layers off in one go. Then he pushes Richie flat, his palm hitting Richie's chest to do it hard enough that it makes Richie gasp.

"Fuck," Eddie breathes then. He was apparently just as eager to see Richie's bare chest as Richie was to see his. He rakes his eyes over and over Richie's hairy, softening middle-aged body as if it's a sculpted masterpiece. The hand he reaches out is tentative and shaking, as if he thinks a museum attendant will leap out and scold him for touching a priceless work of art.

Eddie's fingertips land on Richie softly. They stoke the fire in him despite their barely-there chill. Eddie drags a slow, reverent line down the center of Richie's chest, down the center of his belly, circle around Richie's navel. Richie pants through it, lets Eddie explore with as much patience as he can manage, but when Eddie leans in to drag his tongue up Richie's furred abdomen and fucking _moans_ about it Richie can't take it lying down anymore.

Richie grabs Eds under the armpits and rolls them, flattening Eddie out underneath him. Eddie squirms briefly, and then laughs. The low lamplight glows in his hair and in his eyes. He's beautiful, and Richie thinks of a dozen- no, a hundred things he wants to do with him. First order of business is kissing him again. Richie doesn't go in gentle and steady like Eddie did the first time; he shoots to kill. If he doesn't know the inside of Eddie's mouth like the back of his own hands by the time they break for air he has failed. Eddie groans. It doesn't sound like Richie's name, but it could have been. The thought sends another hundred new ideas racing through Richie's mind, and through his body. He burns everywhere he and Eddie touch, pins and needles everywhere they don't.

Somehow Richie makes his way down to the cradle of Eddie's hips, mapping out every inch of Eddie's body with his mouth and cataloguing every breathless gasp and hum of encouragement while Eddie runs his hands over and over through Richie's hair. Richie can barely see, glasses fogged over by his own damp body heat and Eddie's, but he keeps them on because Eddie's face is far away now and the chance to see it from here is too important to give up on. Before he knows it, the hard-cold button of Eddie's jeans is pressing uncomfortably into Richie's chin.

Richie's lips tingle the same as they did the first time Eddie kissed him. His mouth feels bereft, emptier than it's ever been; his own tongue and teeth are simply _not enough._ He swallows down the rush of salivation and sticks his fingers between his glasses and his eye to smear away the condensation on one lens, just enough so that he can lift up and look. Eddie's cock presses obscenely into the resistance of his jeans, big and warm and begging to be touched. It looks uncomfortable, and Richie's own cock throbs in sympathy.

"It's not gonna suck itself," Eddie quips after an overlong moment of Richie just staring.

"Shut the fuck up," Richie mumbles back, hardly opening his mouth enough for the vowels to make it out. Eddie makes a small curious noise at that, but Richie doesn't feel like- Fuck, for _once_ in his entire goddamn life, Richie doesn't feel like talking. So he rushes to get Eddie's pants undone, tugged down and out of the way, and to put his mouth back to work with something better than words.

 _"Fuck,_ Rich," Eddie swears when Richie lands on him tongue first. His hands are back in Richie's hair again, pulling now, and Richie's scalp tingles now too because he likes that.

Eddie's cock is hot and impossibly soft-skinned against Richie's lips, luxurious. It tastes the same as Eddie's skin everywhere else, except better because the act of tasting it makes Eddie say Richie's name like that, makes his hands clench harder in Richie's hair. Richie has no idea what he's doing, obviously, but he's spent his entire life practicing the art of improvisation and this is no different. _Yes,_ Richie's body responds to every gasp and moan from Eddie, _and,_ until Richie trembles and sweats just as hard as Eddie does. Richie takes the head of Eddie's cock into his mouth, too eager to do it with curiosity. That gets him the loudest moan yet, and the sound shakes through his bones like he's sitting on an amp. He sucks, because that must be what he's supposed to do, and because he wants to, and Eddie praises him for it so he does it again, and again, until Eddie presses his head down further.

It's uncomfortable taking more and more of Eddie's cock into his mouth, but heady and Richie lets Eddie do what he wants (he always lets Eddie do what he wants, _always;_ anything Eddie wants Richie wants to give him). Eddie is impatient and controlling once Richie gives power to him, but Richie knew that about him going in. He could have imagined it would be like this with him. Eddie pulling Richie's hair so hard that reflexive tears spring up in Richie's eyes, the taste of his pre-come salty and bitter on Richie's tongue, the way he cusses and calls Richie every variation on his name that exists, the soreness building in Richie's throat from Eddie's cock hitting his soft palate over and over, the rolling boil of Richie's blood and the way his body trembles - none of it unexpected, all of it so good it makes Richie weak.

"Swallow," Eddie says, and then, "Touch yourself." It's a warning and a demand in one. He doesn't ask or say please, because he never does unless he's being sarcastic. How subtly unfamiliar he had seemed at the beginning of the night, and now it's like he hasn't changed at all. Or maybe it's just that Richie remembers him better now. Richie buries his hand in his pants; Eddie's wish is his command. It's a good thing Eddie is close, because Richie is too and the circle of his fist around his cock has him pleasure-stupid. He strokes himself the way he likes it and turns himself into a wet, open mouth for Eddie to use.

Richie doesn't actually swallow, in the end, because he's too busy coming in his pants. Eddie's come dribbles from his slack mouth as he buries himself in the meat of Eddie's upper thigh, struggling to keep breathing. Eddie pets him through it, gentle again now that he's come. Richie stays there, shaking, for a long drawn-out moment before he has the wherewithal to lift his head and look up at Eddie, still glowing in the lamp light, but shinier now with sweat and wild-haired.

"You're disgusting," Eddie says lightly. His nose wrinkles, but his eyes are cheerful. Richie turns his head to wipe his mouth on his own bare shoulder, just to see Eddie scowl. Eddie knees him in the ribs, slaps at his unsullied shoulder. "Go. Wipe that off for real. You're an animal." Richie scoots off of Eddie and off the bed to stand on trembling legs, but he stumbles his way to the bathroom laughing.

"Now I _really_ wish you'd brought weed," Eddie jokes when Richie comes out of the bathroom, a fresh washcloth in hand for Eddie to use. Richie's step falters and his heart skips to see Eddie still there in Richie's bed, sated and relaxed, and having freed himself fully from his clothing. He's stretched out with his arms over his head, the human embodiment of _going nowhere._ But Richie wants nothing more than to press their bodies back together again and keep each other calm and warm, so he doesn't question it. He tosses the washcloth at Eddie's head and uses the excuse of pulling the covers out from underneath him to avert his gaze while Eddie wipes his come and Richie's spit off of himself.

When Richie climbs back into bed with him, Eddie snuggles up to him without hesitation. The comforter is fluffy and light over their bare skin. Eddie wraps an arm around Richie's waist, kisses him so sweetly behind his ear, at the hinge of his jaw, on the curve of his shoulder. It feels so good and Richie wants it so badly that it almost hurts in a way. This isn't how this is supposed to go. They were stressed and alone and scared and now they've had their life-affirming sex, they've had their endorphins. It should be over now. One or the other of them should give an awkward thank you and book it, with the unspoken agreement between each other that they'd never speak of this again. But Eddie is staying, and Richie wants him to never leave. Richie squeezes his eyes shut. His head is starting to hurt.

"Sorry," Eddie mutters, stops dropping those little kisses, starts to pull away. Richie's arms clench around him tightly, too tightly, like he's on a rollercoaster and Eddie is the only thing preventing him from being propelled to his gruesome death.

"No," he gasps, and then takes a breath and manages to speak normally, "No, please. Continue." There's a long pause with Eddie watching the side of Richie's face and Richie not looking back. But then Eddie reaches up to take Richie's glasses off for him, leaning over him to set them safely on the bedside table. The intimacy of that strikes Richie hard. He can't even imagine letting anyone else do that. But he does his best to push it out of mind as Eddie settles back down into his arms, ignores it in favor of how good it feels to hold him.

Richie wakes with a hard flinch and doesn't know why. He fumbles for his glasses by instinct. The lamp on the writing desk is still on, but now there's also the barest hint of light from the window where the sky has gone from pitch black to an inky indigo. Eddie is still asleep, beside Richie in bed. His hair is a riot of waves and his mouth is open, drooling onto the pillow and making him snore quietly. Seeing him like this, Richie feels as if there is nothing at all holding him down to earth. Nothing except his own desire to stay.

Richie realizes what woke him when the second knock comes.

"Rich?" calls Ben from the hallway. "Eds? Guys, it's time to go."

Eddie groans a groan that Richie remembers well - now - from homeroom in high school. He folds his pillow over his ear to block Ben out, but Richie can tell he's not going back to sleep by the pronounced crease between his eyebrows and the intensity of his frown.

"'M g'nna kill th't fuckin' clown," he grumbles, and Richie laughs. Eddie also complains about having to wear yesterday's clothes, despite the fact that Richie is doing the same. He brushes his teeth with his finger, and then uses water to slick his hair out of his face and complains about that too. Richie thinks about kissing the down-turned corner of his mouth, about hugging him from behind and running his hands through those damp strands. It's a thought that barely lasts a moment, there and gone again so fast it almost escapes his notice.

Just as it escaped his notice that Ben had assumed as a matter of course that wherever Richie was Eddie was there too.


	2. Chapter 2

The first next thing that Richie remembers is getting punched in the face by Bill, and it hurts in real time. He flinches away from nothing, grabs his smarting un-split lip. It was a good fucking clock for someone that Richie knows for a fact had never hit anyone before in his life. Bill had really meant it, and that had hurt just as much as the impact itself. Richie had seen black spots first, and then red when he'd found himself on the ground.

He'd thought he and Bill weren't friends anymore. It seems silly now, like one punch could break them. _Them._ But back then, nothing had ever felt like that before.

"That was a good fucking punch," Richie mutters out loud, not quite either a compliment or a reprimand. Fittingly, Bill looks both pleased and sheepish. All either of them can do is shrug at each other. Eddie, on the other hand, laughs loudly.

"You hit the fucking _ground,"_ he recalls gleefully. Richie glares at him, flips him off. They're on the same side almost instantaneously though, when Mike tells them they'll all have to find the rest of their fucking baggage alone. No one is surprised. They're outnumbered anyway.

So now Richie walks somewhat aimlessly down these old streets, remembering what he can remember and picking at the scab of what he can't. He doesn't know what the fuck Mike is expecting of them, exactly, and he's still not happy about splitting up the party. Always a bad idea. It's fully daylight out now, and the end of summer. Everything looks, just... normal. Well-lit and cheerful, birds chirping, kids on bikes, green grass and blue-and-red marquees. It's full-on fucking quaint. It would be difficult for anyone else to be frightened right here, right now. But Richie doesn't miss the ever-present missing posters - the old ones sun-bleached to unreadable sheets, and the new stark black ink in the shape of strangers' faces. The idyllic atmosphere of a small town is the cheese in a fucking mouse trap. Richie has always known that. He honestly could have done without remembering how he learned it.

The abandoned old arcade-theater doesn't so much call to him as make him feel ill. Lucky him, that probably means he's in the right place. He counts to three with slow breaths to tamp down the urge to be sick, and lets himself in. The papered over door creaks ominously as it closes shut behind him, because of fucking course it does. It's dark inside, dusty and dicked by the elements. Richie creeps in hesitantly at first, peering back into the darkness, expecting some cheap jump scare to get thrown at him. But then from one careful step to the next, he starts to feel something else alongside his anxious nausea, and then he's not looking at the darkness anymore. He's not really looking at anything. He goes through the motions of buying a game token, and then he folds up and disappears into the memory.

Connor had cherubic curly blond hair, an upturned button nose with subtle golden freckles over the bridge, a brown mole on his neck, wide clear blue eyes, and two front teeth just a little bit too big for his pink mouth. His voice had dropped, just barely, when Richie had met him, lower than Richie's but too cracked and raspy still to sound like a man's. He was generous with his compliments, and with the pass of his eyes. He was cute, and nice, and his touch lingered.

Richie had wanted to be his friend. After all, he thought he'd just lost all of his, and a kid doesn't get to be as much of a whore for attention as Richie was from getting plenty of it at home. He was eager for that alone, but.

But.

The brush of Connor's fingers against Richie's sent dancing little sparks all the way up Richie's arm. When Connor's eyes flicked down, just for a moment, to glance at Richie's mouth Richie felt his gaze there physically, like the tickle of a feather. Connor's hair would fall into his face sometimes, when he got really into the game, button-mashing with his bottom lip caught between those big teeth, and Richie would wonder how soft it was. Connor's cheeks were always rosy when they were hanging out. Maybe just because it was summer. Or maybe because of Richie. Richie wanted it to be because of him.

He should have known it was too good to be true. In _Derry?_ Jesus. And Connor even kind of looked like Bowers, if Bowers wasn't so butt fucking ugly. Same nose.

But Richie hadn't expected it, was too caught up in Connor to even notice yet that Bowers had come back through that day, when Connor shut him down - loudly, to make a point. To make an example. And maybe Richie hadn't read it wrong. Maybe Connor was- like him. Maybe he had to do what he did to survive. But it still hurt.

And maybe Richie could have argued the name Bowers called him. Maybe he should have, or maybe that would've just gotten his ass whooped. But he didn't. He didn't have an argument. There _was_ no argument.

There isn't.

What a thing to forget.

Clowns, he'd said, back then. He was afraid of clowns, and going missing, and death - getting murdered, that is, getting fucking _hate-crimed,_ actually, and Eddie- _Eddie._ Holy shit. Yeah, the clowns were creepy; the missing poster, terrifying; his own dead marionette whatever the hell that was, awful. Eddie separate and alone, Eddie disappeared, Eddie hurt, Eddie taken and fucked up-

Eddie hating him. Being disgusted by him. Afraid of him. Like, for real. Leaving him.

Yeah, Pennywise hit the fucking jackpot for scaring Richie with that shit.

Richie relocates himself to the park on autopilot. He's being led around now, by the thread he's caught and started pulling out. He trembles. He shakes under the weight of what he's remembered, of everything he's done and hasn't done because he forgot in the great chasm of years between then and now. He stares up at the fucking Paul Bunyan statue (the lamest possible gay awakening symbol imaginable. Like what, he couldn't have just looked at pictures of Emilio Estevez like a normal queer? Fuck), and he thinks about girls. Women. Whatever.

Richie had always kind of... rushed through it, with women. _Let's get this shit over with,_ he'd think sometimes, and just thought he was a scumbag or something. Some asshole chauvinist who just wanted to get his rocks off. It was a race, though. A race against himself, against the slow creeping sense of wrongness that would take him over if the sex lasted too long. He was never thinking about her. _Touch her the way you touched the last one, maybe she'll like that. No? Do something else. Do it right this time, and hurry up, fuck. Make her come, and then you can leave her. Don't let her give you her number. Now run like there's a fire._ And then he'd go back home or to his hotel room and he'd lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and- and he'd just fucking be sad. Try to figure out why he was such an asshole. Try to figure out what he was doing so wrong to feel like this after - like some kind of black hole had opened up in his stomach and was sucking him in.

Then he thinks about Eddie. Eddie from back then, first. The way the brush of his bony shoulder against Richie's equally bony arm lit Richie up inside like the fog lights in the winter. The way Eddie's laugh made Richie's ears feel warm. When Eddie was sad, Richie was devastated. When Eddie was happy, Richie was euphoric. The tight grip of Eddie's hand around Richie's wrist made his palm tickle in anticipation. And when Eddie had fidgeted with his pencil in class, Richie wanted- wanted- Well, he'd wanted something he's not fully ready to think about now, not anymore. But, fuck, back then? He'd thought about it all the time. And Richie's heart was racing all the while, a frantic metronome beat of _Does he know? He's gonna figure it out. He'll hate me. Does he know? Does he feel this way too? No, he couldn't. Not him. What if he did? Would he kiss me? Would he kiss me? Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me kiss me kiss me, Eddie, kiss me please._

 _Kiss me._ Richie had thought that last night, like a reflex when Eddie had gotten close. A neural pathway so re-enforced it couldn't be totally forgotten. Two comes after one, _kiss me_ comes after _Eddie,_ three after two.

The fear is a reflex too, Richie thinks. Hopes. He's a grown fucking man now, and it's twenty-sixteen and gay marriage is federally legal, and Eddie did kiss him. But the fucking clown puckers up and calls him _dirty,_ and Richie's stomach plummets through his feet. He can't tell where the fire is anymore, but he feels the heat and he runs.

Richie makes it three blocks without seeing or hearing any of it pass him by before he manages to take a breath and make himself slow down and let the stitch in his side ease up. He searches himself all over for another scab to pick at, but now where there once was crusty and sensitive little pieces of missing stuff the memories are revealed now. Some are pink healing skin that Richie is glad to see, and some are wounds pulled back open that he wishes he could close again, but none are hidden from him anymore. There's waiting for Eddie to touch him the way a starving stray dog waits for the day's trash to be put out. There's silently begging Eddie to kiss him whenever Eddie's face comes within five fucking feet. There's sleeping in Eddie's bed with him at eight years old, at ten, thirteen, sixteen. Staying awake until dawn to watch him breathe and feel the warmth of his body even though he'd have to sneak back to his own house and go to school from there in four hours. Crying for days when Eddie's mom moved them away to get Eddie away from the Losers' 'bad influence'. Crying again for weeks, in secret - even from the last of the Losers left in Derry - when Eddie never called him ever again.

And then Eddie, last night. The softness of his mouth, and the careful look in his eyes before Richie pulled him back in to kiss again. The taste of his toothpaste, of his skin. The desperation for him to never stop. The nervous, triumphant race of his heart under Eddie's hand when Eddie touched him. The wonder that it was happening, that it was good, that it was _Eddie,_ before he knew how long he'd wanted for him. His easy confidence, new and spectacular. The sudden irresistible oral fixation. The fire _he_ set was inside Richie, and Richie never for a second thought to run away. He never would have.

And that's it. That's everything. And Richie is caught wondering again, _Does he know? Does he feel this way too? Will he kiss me again? Kiss me, Eddie. Please kiss me._

The townhouse inn looms before Richie is ready for it. Bev and Ben are sitting on the stairs up to the rooms when Richie trudges inside.

"Richie? What's wrong?" Bev asks the second she looks up and sees his face. He has no idea what his expression is. He feels a little bit like Paul Bunyan actually did get him, right over the head. And dirty. He feels dirty, and like a pervert, and a pussy. And he feels like he wants to go find Eddie, and like he wants to be alone and never see another human being again in his life. He's a lie, and a farce, and an idiot, and a hopeless fucking romantic who believes in one true love like a kid. But Bev was Richie's best friend for those scant few weeks before she went away to Portland and vanished.

"Found my token," he tells her, and Ben too because he's there and Losers don't keep secrets. Well, except this one. "Wasn't fun. Gonna go lay on my bed and engage in some mental anguish for a bit." Bev sucks in a hiss and cringes, but there's the hint of a smile behind her teeth and it makes Richie feel a little better just to see it. A little steadier, more like himself, less the halfway point between two different but equally heartbroken people.

"That doesn't sound kosher," Ben jokes. He's grimacing too but his voice and his eyes dance with the same fucked up resilient humor that Bev has, that they all have. Richie snorts, even as he steps between them still hunched defensively into his jacket.

"I never kept it anyway," he parries back. It only comes out about half as rote as he expects it to, so. Success. "But I am on a diet, though, so I'll be indulging in lite anguish, if that helps."

"It does," Ben confirms softly. He curls his hand comfortingly around Richie's ankle as Richie passes on his way further up the stairs, and Richie lets that steady him too.

Richie almost changes his mind, right on the verge of finding somewhere else to hide, when he walks into his room and sees the bed, unmade. He knows he's just imagining the imprint of Eddie's body on the mattress but that doesn't make it any easier to stop staring at where he was. Trying to put him back, if only in Richie's mind. In the end, Richie lays down on Eddie's side of the bed, jacket and shoes still on. He is, after all, specifically here to wallow. He imagines that he can smell Eddie in the sheets too, a perfectly identifiable scent profile that he made up to represent Eddie to himself like a teenage girl with a crush on a book character. Sunscreen and popcorn; good clean summer fun. In actuality Eddie probably has some cologne Richie has never heard of, or else he smells like isopropyl alcohol and Dove For Men.

Richie stays there unmoving for some indeterminate amount of time. He alternates between staring dully up at the ceiling, trying to make shapes out of the water stains there like they're clouds, and squeezing his eyes shut tight and thinking about men, about liking men, about loving... men. There's a stain in the far left corner that could be a turtle, and the thought of kissing a man makes Richie's lips tingle. Right above him there's a big-headed alien, and the thought of having a long term committed relationship with a man spears Richie through with the kind of hopeless longing that has killed people stronger than Richie.

He knows when Eddie gets back from finding his own token because the pipes of the whole building complain about it when he turns on his sink or shower. No doubt Pennywise had tried to thwart him by covering him head to toe in some unidentifiable odorous goo. Richie smiles at the sound of Eddie's unintelligible voice as he rages about the event. The water turns off but Eddie keeps yelling, which is normal and cute and makes Richie smile, eyes closed and imagining. But then he hears someone else's voice. Richie's subconscious is aware that the voice is not supposed to be here before its relative unfamiliarity registers, and he's out in the hall in seconds.

Richie throws open his door just in time to see Eddie edging his way out of his own, trembling and using the doorframe for support. There's blood on his face and neck, but Richie can't tell where it's coming from.

"Guys!" Eddie calls, and all three of them are rushing to him instantly. Ben swears and Bev screams, but Richie can't breathe enough to make any noise. He makes it to Eddie's side first because he's the closest, hitting his knees as Eddie sinks down the wall to sit on the top stair. Bev and Ben are only seconds behind him. "Bowers is in my room," Eddie says, his words deformed by the rush of blood that comes spilling with them out of his mouth. Ben practically leaps over the three of them to get to Eddie's room; it doesn't even occur to Richie to leave Eddie's side to back him up.

"Is it bad?" Eddie asks. Richie still can't see the injury, but the distressed noise Bev makes in response ties Richie's stomach into one big knot. With a shaking hand, he touches Eddie's knee, the inside of his elbow.

"Where-?" Richie is cut off by his own sharp inhale when Eddie turns his head so that Richie can see the other side of his face. There is an oozing gash right in the middle of his cheek. "Jesus fuck. Is- Did it go all the way through?" Eddie whimpers and nods, and the movement sends more blood sluicing down over his jaw to add to the growing multicolored stain down the front of his shirt. Richie swallows down the nausea from seeing the blood, the wound, the wound _on Eddie._ If he throws up now, Eddie will probably scream or cry - and more importantly he won't let Richie help.

"Okay," he breathes when he feels like he can open his mouth without making everything worse (a rare thing). "Okay, c'mon, let's get you cleaned up." Richie clambers onto his feet with the exact amount of grace that one can expect from a forty year old man who's main source of exercise is walking from back stage to center. He tugs at Eddie's elbow and Eddie obediently pushes himself back up the wall. Bev stays seated, her own supportive touch sliding off of Eddie as he rises. Richie walks them backwards into his room and into his bathroom, their eyes locked and Eddie's glassy with pain and stress, and gently corrals Eddie into sitting on the edge of the tub.

Richie's toiletry bag for this trip is vastly overstocked as compared to what he would normally pack on tour. Now he guesses he knows why he had felt the need to bring all this shit just in case, and he's glad that it's just him and Eddie here to see it. He grabs it off the counter where he threw it before dinner last night and pulls out alcohol wipes, antibacterial ointment, skin glue, extra large band-aids, gauze, and tape.

"Uh, which...?" he asks Eddie, holding everything up. Eddie glares at it all in Richie's hands.

"You can try the glue, I guess, but I doubt it'll hold," he decides eventually. His words are still a little bit weird, but the bleeding seems to have slowed enough for him to not be choking on it anymore. Thank fuck. "The ointment will keep it from sticking. Can't use alcohol on an open wound. Why the fuck would you even think band-aids are appropriate in this situation, Jesus Richie."

"Oh excuse me for not knowing what to bring to my first stabbing," Richie snarks back, tossing his unneeded materials back onto the counter. He pulls his last wash cloth out from the drawer and dampens one corner in the sink. He kneels down in between Eddie's knees, cups the uninjured side of Eddie's face, and begins to wipe blood and goo off of the other. Richie tries to be as gentle as he can, but Eddie's eyes still squeeze shut tight and he presses into Richie's hand, away from the cloth.

By the time Eddie's face is clean, the dampened corner of the washcloth is a disgusting red-brown color. Richie pats Eddie's face dry with the other end and then drops it carelessly into the tub with a muffled splat, at which Eddie flinches delicately. The directions on the tube of skin glue are tiny and Richie has to hold it an inch from his fucking face to read them, but it makes Eddie laugh so Richie doesn't mind so much. He cups Eddie's face again and carefully applies the glue as directed.

"If you get any in your mouth," he instructs Eddie, "don't swallow."

Eddie gives Richie a significant look, sparkling eyes and raised brows. It's the same look he would give Richie before making some joke just for him that the other Losers wouldn't get, because they weren't there when it was just Richie and Eddie. He says, "I don't swallow anything that isn't food," smiling with the uninjured side of his face. It's unbearable, kneeling in between Eddie's legs in the intimate quiet of his bathroom while Eddie references last night, and not knowing.

"So you like-" Richie stutters like an idiot. "I mean, you're...?" He doesn't cringe when Eddie starts to frown, but inside his heart is doing what his face would be if he wasn't hiding it.

"I'm nobody's fucking business," Eddie says, voice firm and sharp. Richie should change the subject, he knows he should, but he can't. He can't. This thing inside of him that was kept from him for so long has all these sharp edges, and Eddie himself is one of them, and Richie just wants to pull it out and maybe heal, and maybe Eddie can be there. Maybe Eddie can help patch Richie up, just like this.

"Cool," Richie says. His own voice is a little bit strangled, a little bit high, but he ignores it and so does Eddie. Richie busies himself with folding up the perfect square of gauze to tape to Eddie's cheek. "I'm, uh. I'm..."

"You like girls, Rich, I know that," Eddie finishes into the quiet of Richie's cowardice. "We both had our Big Boy pants on last night, okay, you don't have to let me down easy. Besides, I'm not stupid enough to start having an affair." Sharp pain makes Richie's heart skip a beat when that edge gets pressed in harder instead, and it's his turn to squeeze his eyes shut so that he doesn't cry.

"Right," Richie says. He pastes a smile onto his face before he looks up again, and begins applying the gauze. "You're married. And, I mean, who even knows where I've been, right?"

"I'm not _that_ neurotic, c'mon," Eddie snaps, but he's smiling again, and that's all that really matters. Richie gives him a doubtful look as he smoothes on the last piece of tape. Eddie rolls his eyes as Richie's touch falls away. "Okay, I'm not that neurotic _anymore._ I'm a grown man, I know how to subscribe to a peer reviewed medical journal." Richie snorts, and it's edging up on a genuine mirth. He'd thought himself pretty weak all these years, but turns out he's resilient as hell; he's done this dance before a thousand times. The up and down from hope to heartbreak is so familiar it's almost comfortable.

"That's totally normal and well-adjusted," he quips. Eddie rolls his eyes again, exasperated at the both of them.

"Beep beep," he mutters, but he doesn't mean it. He shifts his weight where he sits, and Richie realizes that he hasn't gotten out from between Eddie's legs yet. He's just kneeling here, knees hurting and cold on the tile floor, staring up at Eddie like he's some kind of god or angel or something, and Eddie is staring back down at him with the subtle pinch of discomfort between his eyebrows.

"You need a shirt to borrow?" Richie all but yelps as he leaps onto his feet with two painful pops. He's already out the bathroom door and to his suitcase, open but still fully packed, before he recognizes what a patently stupid thing that is to say. This isn't Richie's house, this is a hotel, and he's already seen Eddie's two monstrous suitcases no doubt full of an entire wardrobe each. Of course he doesn't need to borrow a shirt.

"Yeah," Eddie calls from the bathroom. "Thanks." Richie willfully decides not to mention the plethora of his own shirts that Eddie has in just the next room over. If Eddie wants to wear one of Richie's shirts for absolutely no fucking reason, great. Richie wants to see him in it. He comes back into the bathroom with a worn-soft t-shirt in hand to find Eddie shirtless and wiping away more blood and goo from his shoulders and chest. Richie holds in an embarrassing noise with great effort.

"Here, fuckface," he says, throws the shirt at Eddie's head, and backtracks so fast he almost trips over his own feet.

After Eddie comes out of Richie's room mostly clean and dry, time seems to pick up speed just to get in as many terrible events as possible. At some point while Richie was actively hurting his own feelings, Bill has run off somewhere. Something about some kid. Mike texts that he's waiting for them at the library. They take one car at Eddie's insistence ("Do you even _know_ what bad air quality will do to you if you have asthma?" he lectures, and when Richie points out that he literally just figured out he doesn't actually have asthma he yells, "Yeah, well, some people do, asshole!"). When they arrive Bowers has beat them there and is, like, a centimeter away from putting a new hole in Mike's face too. Richie happens to be the first one into the room, so he's the one who gets the dubious honor of solving that problem. He acts on pure adrenaline, and when the crash hits his horrible stomach tries to reject everything Richie has ever put into it.

(He could feel it, through the handle of the ax, when the blade went through Bowers' skull.)

They call Bill, figure out where he is and where he's headed, and they follow him like they always have. And before they know it, they're there. The house on Neibolt cuts through the dusk sky like a scythe. It just looks like death.

"Let's kill this fucking clown," Richie snarls, and he fucking means it, more than he thought he could. He's had anger before, he's always had anger, anybody who lived through this kind of bullshit would - hell, anybody could live through less and come out worse. But he's never felt murderous before. Even just now, with Bowers, Richie had only acted on instinct, and felt fucked up after. Still probably feels fucked up now, underneath the steadily building terror and the rage and the continuing dizzy confusion and helpless, hopeless, grasping loneliness. But Bill nods and gives Richie a smile that is more just the baring of teeth, and Richie knows he's not the only one who is walking along the tightrope between fear and eagerness.

They make their way inside, past all of Pennywise's shiny new obstacles. Last time this house was maybe 30/70 psychological torture and mortal peril. Now it's more like 50/50. Not really an improvement, if you ask Richie. The clown itself doesn't 'come out and play' as It said, and down in the cistern the water is chest high and Its fucking shrine of trophies is gone. It's almost satisfying, in a way, to have such clear evidence before them that they really did fuck It up last time. After one last near-deadly boobie trap - kind of literally - the Losers finally make it on deck. And then it's down yet another godforsaken hole.

Mikey's tribal ritual doesn't work, and everything gets just about as fucked as possible. The dog is cute though. For a minute.

Time slows back to normal again when the first rock leaves Richie's hand. He feels like he's still going too fast, flying along separately from the linear stream of everything else, but somewhere in the back of his mind he knows somehow that he's not going fast enough. One day Richie will figure out how to shut up and put up, but it is not this day.

Inside the Deadlights is what Richie imagines Hell would be like, if Hell was some otherworldly thing and not something inflicted on people by other people on earth. The light is painfully bright in his eyes and he can't look away, and he can't feel anything. Everything in the whole universe is just gone, except for the endless screaming. It's like he was removed from his body, somehow, left just as whatever it is that makes him _him,_ painfully exposed and skinless, and then dropped into the buffeting saltwater waves of everyone else that It got. There are too many others to count, and they are all- not hurting, exactly. _Hurt_ is a sensation of the flesh, and this is happening to him- to them- ...somewhere else. But it's bad. It's so, so fucking bad, and Richie would do literally anything to make it stop.

He thinks he probably screams too, but he can't be sure.

Richie hears a few voices he recognizes. Went and his mom. Connor. They're in pain and it hurts. They're scared, and lonely, and they have regrets, and it fucking _hurts._ Richie hears Bowers too, the both of them. They're in pain too, and Richie doesn't want to hurt for them - doesn't want to hurt at all - but he does anyway. He feels the way it felt for Bowers Jr to be all but possessed. He feels the way it felt for Bowers Sr to be stabbed in the throat and die. He feels the way it felt for Georgie to get his arm bitten off.

He sees- It's probably not what Bev saw. More up to date. He sees Stan, in the bathtub, feels the bite of the razor through the tendons of his wrists, the slick sticky slide of warm blood through his fingers. He sees Mike, legless, on the cave floor where Bill was too scared to get him out of the way in time. He sees Ben and Bev, gone mad and strangling each other to death. Bill, so incapacitated by guilt that he just lets himself drown, thinking he deserves it, thinking they don't need him. Eddie, skewered through and choking on Richie's name.

And then there's Eddie again, but different this time. From far away. Mean, and caustic, and so so soothing.

"Beep beep, motherfucker!"

When Richie falls it feels like falling in a nightmare, beside the shooting pain of impact. The light is gone and the dark is impenetrable, and the screaming hasn't stopped. Now it's a grotesque, monstrous shrieking that rattles through Richie's bones and makes his stomach roil in protest. He has his body back now, he thinks, but it- It doesn't feel like it fits right anymore, loose and too tight, not enough limbs and too many. Whatever goes inside has been altered, some stuff forcibly sloughed off and other stuff grafted on.

Eddie's hands on Richie's cheeks are shockingly warm; they feel just like his voice. Richie struggles to find him in the dark for a moment, but finally he's there, leaning over Richie with the darkness behind him like an inversed halo.

"Rich," he breathes, uncharacteristically quiet. "Hey! There he is. I think I got It-"

Richie isn't fully awake yet, that's his excuse. He grabs Eddie by the shirt with both hands and yanks himself up to kiss him. It's just their two mouths meeting, reuniting. Richie has his eyes open this time, both literally and figuratively. That's why he sees it. It, behind Eddie, just a hint of motion and Richie remembers what he saw in the Light-

Richie grabs Eds under the armpits and rolls them, flattening Eddie out underneath him. Eddie squirms briefly, and then screams. He's horrified over something, but the flashing blue light glows in his hair and in his eyes. He's beautiful, and Richie thinks of a hundred different things he wants to do with him. First order of business is kissing him again. Richie does, just a soft press of their mouths, but he can't quite feel it. Slowly, Richie realizes that he's looking down at Eddie through a film of red.

"S'rry," he slurs, because it's dripping on Eddie's face and it's smeared over his lips, and he must hate that. As if to prove Richie's thought right, Eddie gags and whimpers. Richie tries to move off of him, give him some room to breathe, but he finds that he's stuck. So he looks.

He shouldn't have looked. As soon as he looks, it hurts. His right side is cut off from the rest of him by a thick line of impenetrable throbbing pain, beyond which there is nothing at all. The red is blood. His blood, and Eddie's too. Richie whines, in terror and in pain, and Eddie echoes him. There is something sticking through the right side of Richie's torso and into Eddie's left shoulder, pinning them together like the most gruesome paper garland.

"Hey," Eddie says, high and strangled. If they hadn't already fought a psychotic clown together before Richie might not recognize his voice like that. "At least now they can't stop me from giving blood, as long as it's for you."

Richie tries to laugh for him, but the thing sticking through him moves and makes him cry instead. It tears out of Eddie's shoulder, making Eddie shriek and writhe, but it takes Richie with it into the air. Richie hears screaming again, and he hurts so much deeper than he thought a person could, again. He sees Eddie struggle to stand, fall to his knees, and reach out for Richie one-handed.

Then the world lurches sharply, and Richie doesn't see anything at all.


End file.
